


The Yawning Grave

by callunavulgari



Category: Old Kingdom - Garth Nix, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 06:19:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13117830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: does the skywalker choose the path, or the path the skywalker?[or: the sabriel au that no one asked for]





	The Yawning Grave

**Author's Note:**

> I have been working on this fic off and on for two years now. As I'm posting this, I have a good 8k of content including this prologue, but have so much more to go. I am posting this now because I have been talking about finishing this for TWO YEARS, and now that I've watched The Last Jedi and am currently reading Goldenhand, I am actively writing again. This is me basically daring myself to finish this fic.
> 
> And here we have the soundtrack for it, which may end up being tinkered with as I change some things up, but I adore anyway: [spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/1266844436/playlist/0l12YrWm7zUjn9QQZGwnR1) and [8tracks](https://8tracks.com/callunavulgari/the-yawning-grave).

> A long time ago in a land far, far away… Twenty-six long, peaceful years have passed since the necromancer Luke bound the self-proclaimed ‘Emperor’ Palpatine beyond the Ninth Gate and helped restore his sister Leia to the Old Kingdom throne. But all is not well within the kingdom, and peace can only last for so long.
> 
> Abhorsen Skywalker has vanished. In his absence, a guerilla group of necromancers calling themselves the First Order have risen from Death and will not rest until the Abhorsen, and his royal family, have been destroyed.
> 
> With the support of her Kingdom and Ancelstierre alike, Queen Leia Organa of Belisaere has organized a group of brave charter mages. She is desperate to find her brother Luke and gain his help in sending these creatures and their mysterious master past the Ninth Gate, to restore peace and justice to the kingdom once more.
> 
> Leia has sent her most daring paperwing pilot on a secret mission to the Clayr’s glacier, where some old allies may have discovered a clue to Luke’s whereabouts.
> 
> Meanwhile, a young girl named Rey is about to uncover an unbelievable destiny that may even be connected with that of the great Skywalker himself...

 

 

A figure stands on a hill.

If anyone were watching, they would probably tell you that the figure was a man. Covered from head to toe, their surcoat and breeches hidden by an unseasonably warm fur cloak. It’s a rather pale ensemble for such a mysterious figure. Grey. Or perhaps silver. A rectangular mask of burnished metal obscures the stranger’s face. Very plain, with raised lines across the brow and very flat black slits for the eyes and mouth. Like this, it’s impossible to tell whether the figure is male or female.

They are quite tall though, so perhaps it is a man after all.

The figure’s name is Phasma, and fortunately for her, there is no one watching.

It’s a hot summer in the Old Kingdom, the sort that only comes along once every few decades. It’s the kind of summer that parents reminisce fondly over, a story that starts most often over the dinner table as their disinterested audience plays with their roast and make faces at their siblings. It is the sort of story, the sort of day, that starts with the words, “When I was young,” and just goes downhill from there.

Near the Red Lake, the mosquitoes swarm enmass, an endless, horrible static buzz that joins with the wail of the mating and dying cicadas to complete the soundtrack of noisy high summer. Birds circle lazily overhead, scooping insects into their gullet at their leisure. The heat is sticky and humid. Not a single creature, dead or alive, is rushing about on a day like this.

She stands on a low hill two miles from the eastern shore of the lake. Her spine is straight, broad shoulders pulled tight, hands folded at the small of her back. No mosquito dares approach her, no matter how tempting a treat her blood may be. They know what lies under the hill where even the grass refuses to grow.

Phasma is tired from the climb, the heat, the roar of summer all around her, and longs to remove her mask so that she may wipe the sweat from her brow. The hill provides her some protection from the bite of insects, but there is no such protection from the blistering heat of the noon sun, yawning down at her from far overhead.

She is waiting for someone. They will amble along soon enough, if slower than she would like.

There he is now - a tall, lanky fellow scarcely out of his teens, with hair as red and vibrant as a flame. He stands on the fringe of the forest, where the trees and moss give way to flat ground and green grass. His leather armor is as dark as the woman’s is pale, reinforced with plates of dark metal at every joint. He carries a sword in his left hand, his right flung suspiciously across a worn bandolier strapped diagonally across his chest. The whole ensemble is worn awkwardly, as if he isn’t used to carrying about in a suit of full armor. The sword is handled with even less skill, the heft of it in his hand just as unfamiliar as the armor. More so, perhaps. The boy is more likely to stab himself with it than someone else with the way he’s going about things.

As Phasma watches, the stranger slaps a branch away, his pale, angular face twisting with distaste. Twitchy, as well, she notes. Perhaps a library is this one’s natural habitat. He does look like the scholarly sort.

Though, she thinks shrewdly, her eyes going back to the bandolier, perhaps not.

She wears a bandolier of her own across her chest, the ivory of the seven pouches a stark contrast to the ebony of the handles. She recognizes the bells for what they are, and the sort of power that this twitchy man-child must possess if he too wields them. His skill with a blade will hardly matter if he is overly skilled with the bells.

They are kin. _Necromancers_.

Far beneath the hill, farther than any normal man or woman could hope to dig, sits the thing that called them both here. Phasma can feel the echo of its power in her bones, knocking a murky, dark tune against the insides of her ribs. She had first heard its call leagues from here, over the great sea and across another kingdom. Whatever the thing is, it is an artifact of great power. It is very loud, and very angry - Phasma would much like to find out its true nature.

The man moves away from the shelter of the trees, face still set into an ugly grimace, and starts up the hill.

Phasma blinks, and focuses on the child that the man is tugging behind him.

It is a small creature. A boy of perhaps three or four, dark-skinned and dark-haired and dark-eyed, wearing a white tunic that is smeared with red mud and dirt. His sleeve is torn, his knees scuffed. He is moving sluggishly, feet dragging as his tiny body droops with exhaustion. The broken capillaries in the whites of his eyes tells Phasma all she needs to know. It isn’t that the child has come with the man willingly, it’s that he’s simply grown too tired to fight.

She wonders if the man used Kibeth on the boy, or if he’d just dragged the boy behind him the whole way.

At that moment, the man looks up and spots her. For the fraction of a second, he freezes, startled, and the boy grunts and runs into the backs of his legs. When the man still does not move, the child cranes his head around to see her. His eyes widen, blinking twice in the glare of the sun.

“You are Phasma,” the man says, after an extended pause. “Snoke spoke of you.”

His voice crackles with more power than she’d anticipated. From his awkward gait and ungainly stature, she had assumed that he was little more than an initiate in the ways of sorcery. Skilled enough to get his bells, yes. But powerful enough to stand in Death? Skilled enough to venture beyond the first gate? To withstand the current of that great river, grey and forever churning?

She was wrong.

She does not like to be wrong.

Phasma watches him approach her, her gaze sharp. One hand rests on her sword, the other on her bells. She is fairly certain that she could reach them before the man reached his. Keeping her wits about her is the best thing to do at this juncture. As unsure as she is of his skills, speed has always been on her side.

“I know of no Snoke,” she tells him calmly, her words crisp and concise. The ability to sound sure in the face of danger is a skill that took her many long years to master, longer even than it took her to master the bells. “I know only of the power that drew me here. Is this your Snoke?”

The man inclines his head in a nod, his eyes watching her through his lashes. Good. He knows to be wary of her in turn.

“You will tell me how to commune with the power that lies beneath this mound,” she tells him, in a tone that brooks no argument. He shifts, drawing the boy out from behind him and setting him down in the dirt. He isn’t gentle, but the boy does not even wince.

“There is a tunnel to the west of here,” he tells her. “Go there. Commune with our master. You will see.”

Phasma watches him and the boy carefully. She did not get this far in life unquestioningly taking strangers at their word. She turns aside and hums a quick spell, fingers twitching against her bells. She does not need them yet. Not for this.

She watches impassively as two thin creatures rise from the dirt at her feet. They are human in shape, but not quite so in spirit. Flesh of blue mist and bones of white fire. They are Free Magic elementals, called Hish by most.

The man watches them as well, pink tongue darting out over his cracked lips. He looks furious.

He also looks nervous.

Phasma is more intrigued by the boy. He does not cower in fear the way that she’s come to expect all children to. Children like dead things perhaps even less than adults, falling to panic easily, darting this way and that. Easy prey.

This one does no such thing. He sits in the dirt and watches her creations writhe, his expression more curious than fearful. Phasma does not possess a single motherly bone in her body, but this boy makes her wish otherwise. She could make him into a fine man, if given the time.

“Should I not return by nightfall, my servants will destroy you. Do not try to hide in Death, little necromancer. You will like that outcome even less.”

Phasma watches, but the man merely folds his long legs beneath him and takes a seat next to the boy. His dark eyes glitter menacingly at her, but she is not afraid of him. Fear is for people that are not her.

“I will wait here, then,” he tells her. And with that, he turns away from her, leaning to press his ear to the raw earth. Dismissed.

Phasma is not the wrathful sort. Perhaps when she was a child she was quick to anger, but as she grew, she learned. Better to be the statue than the storm. Statues weather hundreds of storms, thousands even, if well made, before they begin to succumb. Storms are quick to dissipate.

Phasma appreciates order. There is no use dwelling on his dismissal, not when there is power such as this just beneath her feet.

She goes.

.

When Phasma returns, her limbs are cold as ice. She is not quite staggering, but she is affected. She feels brittle and weak. There is a cold emptiness in her now that was not before she ventured into the tunnel under the hill.

The man and the boy are just where she left them. The man with his ear pressed to the ground. The boy a few feet away, drawing something into the dirt with a long and pointed stick. With a gesture she dismisses the Hish.

“I will serve,” she tells the man, who she now knows as Hux.

Hux smirks at her, his pointed face scrunching up like a weasel’s. It’s an apt comparison, and in that moment, the storm creeps over her, and she hates him with absolute conviction. She wonders how long before that too is taken from her, and that hate turns to loyalty.

“Will you?” He looks at her slyly through slitted eyes, beneath strategically lowered pale lashes.

She nods. “I will.”

“Good,” he tells her with a nod, pushing to his feet. That too, he does not do gracefully. His body flails for a moment, and she worries that he may fall on the boy and crush him. He rights himself quickly enough, his eyes narrowed. “There are Charter Stones that have been raised too close to the hill. You will destroy them.”

Again, she nods. “I will.”

“After, you will take up your bells and you will teach. We will need an army of necromancers for the work that lies ahead, and just as many Dead.” He pushes the boy towards her and she catches him against her legs. The boy’s back is hot and damp with sweat beneath her hand. He will need water, and soon.

Hux takes a step towards them, and to her surprise, pulls the bandolier from his chest. It sits wrongly with her, the idea of parting with her own bells for even a moment. Long white fingers stretch across the gap between them, carefully cradling the belt. She takes it from him. For the boy, of course. She’ll need to make more, if she’s to have an army of pupils.

But first, there is a last thing to do. She stretches her hand out, palm held upwards, and a tiny, metallic spark glimmers there. Neat and silver, it is but the smallest shard that she could find. Snoke assured her that it would be enough for the task at hand.

Hux holds up his own hand and the shard quickly burrows beneath his skin. It could be for him, but she thinks not. The shard is meant as a seed, and Phasma is sure that it is meant for another. The shard is meant for whoever can do the most harm.

She bites her lip, for Snoke did not tell her this part of the plan. The curiosity overwhelms her. “And you? Where will you go?”

Hux smiles at her, teeth white and faintly crooked. “I go south, Commander Phasma of the Mask. South to Ancelstierre, across the Wall. I have much to do there, and even farther afield. But you will hear from me when I have need.”

Phasma hesitates again. “And the boy? What is his name?”

Hux turns back to her, face peeling apart into a sneer. It is the ugliest expression she has seen on him yet.

“The boy needs no name. He is merely a number.” Hux pauses, scrutinizing the child still clinging to her waist. With a shrug, he turns away from them. “Call him what you like. He, like the rest, will be dead soon anyway.”

And with that, he takes his leave.

Phasma blinks down at the child. He blinks back at her.

“A number,” she muses with a sigh. “Fine. Come then, child. I will find you some food and water, and then our studies will begin.”


End file.
